Mediox to introduce multimedia food traysJust when I thought I'd seen every place where you could possibly put an advertising screen, Mediox came out of stealth mode to prove me wrong :) Here's what their press release blurb has to say:

“The market for multimedia advertising in fast food outlets is expected to reach $10 billion by 2012 and our goal is to provide restaurant chains with hardware and flexible content management system to generate additional revenue,” said Roman Kyrychinskiy, co-founder of Mediox. “Initially we are planning to launch this concept by offering fast food restaurant chains several rate plans including providing trays free of charge in exchange for a share in advertising and retail revenues,” he added.

The current version of the interactive multimedia fast food tray prototype featured at Wikipedia.org in “Restaurant Media” article, will be used for software development purposes and is currently being redesigned to facilitate for harsh usage conditions, intuitive interface and easy to use and durable control mechanism. The multimedia tray will allow visitors at fast food restaurants to watch live music broadcasts, movie previews, play games, check out nutritional information and much more. Soon fast food customers will be able to experience enjoy interactive entertainment right on their fast food trays.

If they can get around breakage and loss issues, this could be an interesting idea, though it looks as though it's only in the very early prototype phase right now. And, as opposed to digital menuboards, if a consumer doesn't want to look at the tray, he could simply return it to the counter, or cover over the screen area with a placemat or napkin :)